Interview with Norma M.T. Braun, MD by Michala Biondi, Associate Archivist, part 1

Dr. Norma Braun (neé Wang Mai Tsen) was born in Shanghai, China during the third Japanese invasion, before the World War II. Prior to the war her family was well off and very well educated. Both her grandfather and father spent time in American universities. Norma, however did not attend school until age 10, because of the war. In 1949, she, her mother and siblings relocated to Philadelphia. Norma, who desired to be a doctor from a young age, started medical school at Temple University but transferred to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (Class of 1963) after being offered a scholarship. She completed her internship and residency at Bellevue Hospital and began working at St. Luke’s Hospital in 1982, as a cardio-pulmonary fellow under A. Loomis Bell, MD, who ran the cardiopulmonary laboratory. Eventually she narrowed her specialty to pulmonary medicine, and continues to work in that area at St. Luke’s, now Mount Sinai Morningside.

Michala Biondi is an Associate Archivist at the Arthur H. Aufses, Jr. MD Archives at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (2016- ). She is responsible for the various facets of the Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West collections.